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As North Korea continues to escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula with the threat of nuclear war, hacktivist collective Anonymous hacked into North Korea's official Twitter and Flickr account and revealed the user registration list of the country's official website.

The group posted a warning on April 2, 2013, claiming to have stolen user records from the North Korean government website, and published the content two days later.

A majority of South Korean net users initially welcomed the news. But opinion quickly soured after it was reported [ko] that 2,000 among the 9,001 users in the registration list are believed to be South Koreans, including [ko] activists, labor groups, members of the media, and academics, fueling concerns over possible human right violations following this revelation.

Joining North Korean sites is considered a serious anti-state activity in South Korea and is punishable by law up to several years in prison.

As proof of the claim that the collective had hacked North Korea, the North Korean Twitter feed sent out tweets that read “hacked” with links to North Korea-related websites. One tweet said “Tango Down” and linked to North Korean Flickr account where an unflattering image of Kim Jong-un with pig ears and nose and a Mickey Mouse belly tattoo was displayed. Texts in the image criticized Kim for “threatening world peace with ICBMs and nuclear weapons”, “wasting money while his people starve” and “concentration camps and the worst human rights violation in the world”.

The image has since been removed, but there are screen captures of the image when it was live.

@0103geeehyun: The registration list is so f**cking detailed. The initial purpose of the hacking would be to blackmail North Korea who keep making provocations, but people seem to focus (not on the hacking itself but rather on) ratting out “pro-North” people in South Korea. By revealing this list, the conflict/division between the right and left side will grow deeper than ever. Anyways, on a personal level, I just want to live in a country with no war.

@jwmuzik_: International hacker group Anonymous hacked North Korean site “Uriminzokkiri” and disclosed a list of 9,000 names who registered for the site and quite a lot of them were proven to be South Koreans. Most of them are believed to be innocent and irrelevant people and even few are users on the Ilbe site (extreme right-wing website taking a hostile stance against the North). It seems there have been email/identity theft.

Some conservatives as well as right-wing groups lavishly thanked [ko] Anonymous for disclosing names of people they believe either to be North Korean spies or pro-North South Koreans.

But many pointed out the naivete and ignorance of assuming that the collective had done something just to benefit the South Korean government, or any government for that matter.

@s_hunpark: Anonymous hacked North Korean sites– what Korean local media choose to ignore is the group's anarchistic nature. Their previous activities and their symbols shows that they are an anarchist group (that doesn't believe in government of any kind).

More serious discussions have formed around the possibility of this data being used to investigate and monitor citizens. Influential Twitterati and lawyer Choi Young-ho (@Lawyer_Korea) answered [ko] the legal question:

@Lawyer_KOREA: According to Supreme Court precedent, (people can) use information from the Uriminzokkiri site, although this information would not be accepted as a legal proof of someone joining, aiding, and abetting an anti-state organization under our national security law. However, they can surely use the date of birth and email address as secondary sources in court.